>Roy, I think his note was calling for a way to say "I defined a book
>author property using <this> DTD and semantic" so that others could use
>the same specification with the intent of some level of
>interoperability.
>
>I didn't read anything in there about HTTP methods or other
>protocol-level changes.
If it is being used to establish interoperability, then it is the protocol.
Semantics-by-reference is a very common technique (we had the same discussion
at the Dublin Metadata Conference regarding schemas). I wasn't disagreeing
with Jim's suggestion, except to note that
1) XML is nothing special in that regard, and
2) the IETF doesn't do that, and
3) HTTP doesn't need it if the application is done right.
The HTTP approach, when used wisely, is to construct a set of resources
that represent the application, and then use standard methods on those
resources. My reading of Jim's message was that it was a criticism of
the direction of WebDAV versioning, which I would agree with, but
his suggested solution is entirely different than mine. This doesn't
change the fact that it is a good idea to have such a DTD library.
....Roy